Abstract:
The purpose of the article is to report on a project aimed at exploring the use of
translanguaging as a strategy to support bi-/multilingual students in acquiring
academic literacy in English while promoting the terminologisation of African
languages through exploratory scientific talk. The topic is contextualised by
juxtaposing multilingualism as a problem with multilingualism as a resource.
This is followed by a discussion of translanguaging as an alternative to
monolingual education. An overview is given of a number of empirical studies
on translanguaging conducted in South Africa during the past 15 years.
Subsequently, I discuss a research project that elicited students’ opinions about
translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy. Speakers of eight African languages,
including Afrikaans, experienced cognitive and affective benefits. Despite some
reservations, they also considered translanguaging to be a useful platform for
creating technical terms in African languages, and were positive about future
use
